date & oat muffins

I found a copy of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest in a dusty old bookstore while I was in Sydney a few weeks ago. You have to admire a handwritten book complete with a recipe that involves creating a ‘forrest’ of broccoli florets.

On Sunday I was seeking baking inspiration and delved in to find something different. I haven’t had the courage to attempt the actual “forest”, but there are some interesting muffin recipes tucked near the end of the book.

Of course I never have all the ingredients to make a recipe exactly, so I merged a Pecan Oatmeal Muffin and Date Honey Muffin recipe together .. or it might have been Honey Oatmeal and Pecan Date?
Result? Quite possibly the most fabulous muffins to come from my oven in a long time. Next week I’m ditching the dates in favour of frozen blueberries.

Ingredients

1 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt

100g melted butter
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup chopped dates

1 cup milk (recipe says buttermilk, I say milk, smilk)
1 large egg (I used a duck egg that’s been in the fridge awhile – plans for a super human omlette never came off)
Preheat oven to 180 C

Sift flours, soda, salt and powder and mix in rolled oats. Make a well in the centre. Mix the honey and butter together, add 1/2 cup chopped dates. Whisk together milk and egg and add to date mixture. Pour into the flour well and mix gently until just combined.

Pour into well greased muffin tins or paper muffin cases. Chuck in the over and set the timer for 20 minutes. Stick a skewer (kebab sticks are great for this) into a muffin, if it comes out clean they’re done.

Yum.

Made about 9 big muffins.